It is the latest in a series of initiatives which the Government says will reduce the distress of elderly patients when they are taken into hospital.

Around 1,000 care staff and volunteers who work well with the elderly have been recognised as dignity champions' and rewarded for their efforts to improve the services that older people receive.

Mr Lewis said this idea will be extended to mental health units.

But campaigners say ministers need to go much further and point out that the abolition of mixed sex wards would do far more to reduce suffering and distress.

On Monday, a female patient was strangled on a mixed- sex mental health ward.

Paul Corry, of mental health charity Rethink, said the death of the 58-year-old woman in Rochdale highlighted exactly why Government rhetoric must be converted into practical changes.

"We want the Dignity in Care programme to make significant improvements to people's experiences, particularly on psychiatric wards that too often lack a therapeutic focus and can be unsafe surroundings for women," he said.

Mind, which works with people who experience mental distress, said patients routinely felt "stripped of dignity" and a recent independent survey found 55 per cent of psychiatric patients were being forced to endure the indignity of mixed sex wards.

The Daily Mail has been campaigning for 12 years to have mixed sex wards scrapped, but they have persisted despite Labour pledges in 1997 and 2001 to phase them out.

There has been mounting pressure to end the "shameful" treatment of elderly people in hospitals and care homes, which was again highlighted yesterday in a report from an influential group of peers and MPs.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights called for a "complete change of culture" in health and care services and said new legal obligations should be placed on old people's homes.